Born in York in 1606, Sir Thomas Herbert (d. 1682) is perhaps best remembered today, when he’s remembered at all, as a supporter of the Parliamentarian cause during the English Civil War (1642-51), who served as an attendant, or groom of the bedchamber, to the captive King Charles I from 1647. Herbert continued in this role until Charles’ execution in January 1649, and is said to have been on relatively good terms with the King, in spite of his unwavering support for Parliament. In this short blog post, I intend to explore another, even less well known, but arguably more interesting, facet of Herbert’s career: his travels to Persia, or present-day Iran, and his observations of one of the two major branches of Islam, specifically Shi’ism.

In March 1627, Herbert joined an English diplomatic mission to Shah Abbas of Persia, led by Sir Robert Shirley and Sir Dodmore Cotton. Herbert’s travels over the next roughly three years took him to South Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius, India and Persia. He returned to England in January 1630, and in 1634, he published an account of his travels overseas, which he entitled A Description of the Persian Monarchy Now Beinge: The Orientall Indyes Iles and Other Parts of Greater Asia and Africk. He expanded the book for a second edition in 1638, changing the title to Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique.

In this latter work, Herbert wrote extensively about the varieties of Islam which he had encountered on his travels throughout the Middle East and the Indian Ocean region. One of his most striking passages in this regard concerns ‘the religion of the Persians’ (Shi’ism), which he compared with that of the ‘Turks’, or Ottomans (Sunnism):

The Persian Religion at this day varies not from the Turks in any particle of the Alcoran; and yet they account one the other Hereticks, and are no lesse zealous and divided in their profession, than wee and the Papalins [Catholics] ... [there] is sown such mortall hatred betwixt these two potent Monarchs that (to Europs good) they abominate each other with implacable hatred.^[1]

Herbert was therefore able to distinguish between the Sunni and Shi’a branches of Islam, as officially professed by the Ottoman and Safavid empires, respectively. Furthermore, in the chapter in which this quote features, Herbert explained some of the major differences between the two branches. He correctly perceived, for instance, that Shi’as regarded the first three ‘Imams’, or caliphs, to have succeeded Muhammad, successively Abu Bakr, Umar ibn Al-Khattab and Uthman ibn Affan, as illegitimate. Indeed, the Shi’a were originally those Muslims who objected to the accession of Abu Bakr to the late Muhammad’s role as leader of the nascent Islamic community. Herbert wrote correctly of the Shi’a belief that Muhammad should have been directly succeeded by a family member, specifically his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who became the fourth caliph instead, succeeding Uthman in 656, or 35 in the Islamic calendar. (In fact, the name ‘Shi’a’ comes from the Arabic ‘Shiat Ali’, or ‘Party of Ali’.) ‘Abuboker, Omer, and Osman,’ wrote Herbert, ‘are by the Turks most venerably accounted of; but by the Persians (as appeares by their cursing them in a prayer made by Syet Gunet) as impostors, doggs, and hereticks’.^[2]

To anyone with at least a basic understanding of Islam today, Herbert’s discussion of the Sunni-Shi’a divide is unremarkable. By the standards of early seventeenth-century England, however, it reveals a more nuanced (though certainly not unmatched) understanding of Islam. Until the late sixteenth century, most Western Europeans (let alone English) writing about Islam knew little, if anything, about Shi’ism. Following the collapse of the Ismaili Fatimid Caliphate in North Africa during the twelfth century, Shi’ism was known by Western Europeans, if at all, ‘as the religion of obscure and eccentric sectaries’.^[3]

During the sixteenth century, however, Twelver Shi’ism became the state religion of the increasingly powerful Safavid Empire, which came into conflict with the Sunni Ottoman Empire to its west, with which Western Europeans, and certainly the English, were more familiar. It therefore became harder for the English to ignore or remain ignorant of Shi’ism, particularly as they established diplomatic and commercial relations with the Safavid state. We should be careful not to exaggerate this shift in attitudes, of course, as most English accounts of Islam continued to paint a fairly monolithic and hostile picture of the religion. Through writers like Herbert, however, we can detect the emergence of more complex and variegated English understandings of Islam, which became increasingly common as the seventeenth century gave way to the eighteenth.

In my next blog post, we shall explore some of these texts, which aimed for a deeper understanding of Islamic practices and beliefs. We shall see how although these works might have been more accurate in many cases, this didn’t necessarily mean that they were any less biased, or any less driven by the ideological concerns of their authors.

Plaque dedicated to Herbert in High Petergate, York, near York Minster. Available via Wikimedia Commons.

A view of Persepolis, taken from the 1677 edition of Herbert’s Travels. Available via Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait of ‘A Persian Woman’, taken from Herbert’s Description of the Persian Monarchy (1634). Available via Wikimedia Commons.

Title Image: Portrait of Herbert, c. 1642. Artist unknown, oil on canvas. Available via Wikimedia Commons.

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[1] Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique (London: Richard Bishop, 1638), 251.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Daniel Norman, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), 282.